Accessing Mac formatted drive on PC

Portable Drives My Passport
1

Hi all,

I recently transitioned my home laptop from a Mac to a PC (running Windows 10). I only saved my data onto a WD passport drive, not realizing that it needs to be formatted differently for a Mac vs. a PC. Is there any way for me to access the data already on the drive on the PC? The instructions I have found online require reformatting the drive, which I assume would wipe out existing data. The old Mac was dying so I can’t re-access the data off it unfortunately.

Thanks!

2

There are various programs you can install onto your PC which will allow this. Some examples are on the link below, but just do a search for “accessing mac hard drive from windows 10” to see others:

4

You can access the data on your WD Passport drive without reformatting it, even though it’s formatted for a Mac. Try HFSExplorer or Paragon HFS+, as these tools will give you full read-and-write access to Mac-formatted drives on a Windows PC.
And if you’re comfortable with more advanced options, you can create a Linux Live USB (tools like Rufus) and boot your PC from it.

7

If the drive is formatted by FAT or FAT32, then you can access the drive easily on a PC. For APFS or HFS+ drive, Windows can’t access the partition by default.